Should Photographers Even Actually Want More Megapixels?

Is it foolish to buy a camera with 40-plus megapixels? Photographers are still pushing for higher megapixel count, but that may be too many.

I will demonstrate in this and the following article that many of us don’t necessarily want or need all the 40 or 60 megapixels that some modern cameras deliver. Looking back, increasing the camera pixel count was necessary, but now it has become a burden and delivers more than many of us require.

It was back in 2001 when I first bought my first digital camera. It was a small, compact camera that took 1.5-megapixel images. Looking at those pictures now — mostly snaps of my family when my son was born — there’s not that much difference between them and the 6” prints I got from a compact film camera. The image quality wasn’t great, especially in dynamic range, and the photos couldn’t be enlarged much. Nevertheless, for family snaps, it did an okay job.

For serious photography, I stuck with my Olympus OM2n 35mm film SLR. However, within a couple of years, I was building a website for my business and needed photos to illustrate it. DSLRs were financially out of my reach. Therefore, I upgraded the compact digital to a Nikon Coolpix bridge camera with a 5-megapixel sensor. It was promoted as a “prosumer” camera. The pictures hold their own even today. With it, I could provide pictures for the website and could happily get photo-grade 8” prints from its images.

It was a great little camera until its Type 2/3 CCD sensor failed. That was a common fault, and I got it repaired under a product recall. However, it failed again shortly afterward. They would not replace the sensor a second time. So, Nikon and I parted ways.

Since then, the number of megapixels in cameras has increased. Photography articles back then celebrated cameras reaching 10 megapixels, and then 20 megapixels became the target. Now, many cameras still sit around the 20-24 megapixel mark, but some deliver much higher resolution, at 40 or even 60 megapixels, like the Sony a7R IV and a7R V.

It’s time we start asking whether that resolution is necessary.

In photography, almost every advantage comes with an equal disadvantage. Historically, adding more photosites (the microscopic light receptors on the sensor) had drawbacks. It would result in more noise in the photo and, consequently, a lower dynamic range.

Technology has moved on. Although it remains true that higher ISOs result in noisier pictures, the resulting images from high-megapixel sensors and previously impossible ISOs are still good enough for the most critical eye to behold. Coupled with the fabulous noise-reduction software available today (I use DxO PhotoLab’s DeepPRIME XD3, which I believe is second to none), my camera produces great images at ISOs higher than I ever need to go.

But there is another issue. If you increase the photo’s size, the file size increases too. My 20.4-megapixel OM-1 Mark II typically produces 18MB files. I can therefore fit between 50,000 and 55,000 uncompressed raw files on a 1 TB hard drive. It’s far fewer with a 60-megapixel camera. In that case, a 1 TB drive can hold only 10,000 to 20,000 uncompressed RAW files. Some commercial photographers can get through that many images in a month or less. Consequently, it means buying extra storage, whether that is on hard drives, in the cloud, or both.

Furthermore, computers need greater processing power to handle those files. A friend recently upgraded to a 45MP Canon EOS R5 II. He then discovered that his computer could not handle the files during RAW development, and processing often caused the apps to crash.

If you are producing larger images, the camera needs more processing power to achieve the data transfer speeds we expect. That generates more heat, which can lead to problems. Canon’s infamous issues with the original R5 when shooting video are a good example of that.

Also, to maintain reasonable write speeds and avoid buffering, one must buy faster and far more expensive memory cards.

One question we should ask is at what sensor resolution does a lens stop delivering visibly more detail? Lenses are not perfect. Therefore, there will come a point when the higher resolution camera exceeds the lens’s performance.

For entry-level lenses, typically supplied as kit lenses, the visible sweet spot is around 16–24 megapixels, depending on the lens and camera. Nevertheless, there can sometimes be benefits up to 30 or even 36 megapixels. Beyond that, the extra pixels mostly record lens aberrations, field softness, and diffraction effects rather than new detail. Furthermore, many consumer zooms struggle to fully resolve even 24 megapixels across the whole frame, especially in the corners.

Meanwhile, mid‑range enthusiast lenses, such as some f/1.8 primes and better constant‑aperture zooms, typically have a higher sweet spot at around 24–36 megapixels. There might be meaningful gains up to around 45 megapixels with some systems. These lenses tend to scale well with modern 30- to 45-megapixel sensors, especially when slightly stopped down, and edge/corner quality usually becomes the first limiting factor.

Professional/high-end lenses will comfortably support 45–60MP full‑frame sensors. Meanwhile, some primes and macro lenses still show gains beyond 60 megapixels.

So, if you want to upgrade to a high-resolution camera, you may need to upgrade the lenses too to reap the benefits.

High-resolution images can be cropped, leaving enough pixels to produce a large photo-quality print, which I will discuss in the next article. However, speak to almost any good professional photographer, and he will answer with something along the lines that the great Frank Capa said: if your photos aren’t good enough, you are not close enough. Atmospheric interference and lens aberrations are exaggerated when you shoot from farther back and crop. Moreover, the perspective of the photo differs when you stand back and crop than when you move in. When standing farther away and cropping, the camera is still too far from the subject, resulting in a compressed perspective. Background objects will appear closer to the subject. Consequently, the size differences between near and far objects are reduced. Standing far back and using a long lens can create a flatter look, making subjects look like cardboard cutouts.

Meanwhile, shooting closer to fill the frame creates an exaggerated perspective, making nearby subjects appear farther from the background, thereby adding separation. In other words, the photo appears to have more depth. For those reasons, it’s always better to improve your photography by learning to get closer to the subject rather than relying on cropping.

You wished for a 40- or 60-megapixel camera. Now you have it, what difference will it truly make? Clearly, as we have seen so far, there are advantages and disadvantages. But what I haven’t discussed is transferring those images to print or viewing them on screen. Those are in my next article.